


Seems Like Years Since It's Been Clear

by LookingForDroids



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Almost Fluff, Multi, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Victory, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5222417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this kink meme prompt:</p><p>
  <i>Ever since the discovery that Titans are sustained through sunlight, no one can quite greet the sun the same--there's too much fear and despair in its connotations. How can you smile at the thing that's birthing your worst nightmares?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Cut to the moment the last titan fell, everyone is alive, it's kind of hard not to cry and look, there's the sun rising on the horizon.</i>
</p><p>(http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/19979.html?thread=10294539#cmt10294539)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seems Like Years Since It's Been Clear

Eren is exhausted.

They've been working all night, not even fighting but cleaning up, tying off loose ends. It's ugly, methodical business. He doesn't enjoy it like he thought he would once, trapped behind walls - or hell, like he _had_ once, tearing through skin and solid muscle with fists and jagged teeth. It's hard to glory in the death of a helpless opponent, and his rage these days is tinged with pity and bent in the direction of the ones who caused this, not the ones who suffered for it. But he can't waste time here. This might be the last of them, pinned down in this long-abandoned city, but the sky is turning pale with the oncoming dawn, and innocent as they are, the monsters won't be helpless for long.

There. Below. He sees it: a dark, sluggish shape thirteen meters tall, this one lanky and almost human-looking if you ignore the scale, and the teeth. Even now, there's something about it that terrifies, unnatural in a way that lifts the hair on his arms, and even now, it's habit and instinct to shove terror away. He launches from a massive, crumbling building, and the whir of 3D maneuver gear echoes off rows of the same impossible structures like canyons lining the black streets so far below. Wind in his face, cold air and acceleration, and with a shout he swings and ricochets, slicing downward as his arc takes him close enough for the kill. Blood sprays hot, steaming into nothing as it hits the air and his skin, and the ponderous body falls. Just like that. It's over. 

He lands beside it, breathing hard, nothing in his head for a moment but emptiness and the silence that switching off his gear always leaves. The black stuff the streets are made of is rough against his palms, abrasive, and he can see grass and twisting roots poking up through the cracks left by centuries. When he looks up, the Titan he'd brought down is already rotting away in a cloud of steam, insubstantial as a nightmare.

Mikasa lands beside him with a soft thump, too familiar to startle him. That tattered rag of a scarf hangs around her shoulders, bright as the blood soaking through a bandage high on her left arm. She looks as tired as he feels.

"Taken care of things here?" she asks, indicating the corpse with a brisk nod. 

"Yeah," Eren says. "It's done. How's your cleanup going?"

A pause, as Mikasa considers that, serious as she always is. 

"I think..." she says, and it's been a long time since he heard her so uncertain. "As far as I can tell, there aren't any more. I think we got them all."

It's a moment before the words sink in, and when they do, it's a moment before he can do anything but breathe, rocked by the realization. His eyes are drawn again to the remnants of the dead Titan, now only a ribcage and a spine. Before the hour is up, even that will be gone. The last of them. It shouldn't be possible, but there it is, dead, and here he is, alive.

"Eren," Mikasa says, and when he looks up at her she's holding out a hand to help him to his feet. Her palm is rough in his, not as warm as his skin but warmer than the pre-dawn air, and she tugs him upwards with inexorable strength.

"We should go," she says, and he blinks, uncertain what she means. They have time to catch their breath here, if the danger is truly gone. 

"Up there," she says, pointing at one of the ruined towers. "Armin's there. We can watch the sun come up together."

The name hits him like a punch to the gut, and suddenly, despite everything, all the fractures and the blood between them, it's the only thing in the world he wants.

"Yeah," he says, his voice thick, and Mikasa, understanding, doesn't ask him to say anything else. He engages his gear, hooks a window and rises with an exhilarating lurch, shouting this time for the joy of it, and the victory. When he pulls himself over the final ledge, he can see all the streets below laid out in a neat grid, the rooftops and open spaces and the forest at the edges reclaiming it all.

But it's hard to care about that, because Armin is already there, a small, hunched shape sitting at the edge of the roof with his legs dangling off, staring eastward. Fearless, but by now they're all used to flying. Eren sits beside him, cautious, and he doesn't look in Eren's direction, but he doesn't flinch or move away.

"I wonder who lived here," Armin says, like they're friends still, and Eren realizes with an almost painful shock that maybe they are.

"Who knows?" he says, too casual, curses himself for an idiot and forces himself to continue. "Maybe, when all this is done, we can find out."

Armin does look at him then, startled out of stillness, and then with careful deliberation, he smiles. Not an easy smile, but a real one.

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe so."

Silence falls again, almost comfortable this time, nothing offered or demanded. After a moment, Mikasa sits down at Eren's other side with a sigh, heavy despite her grace. He doesn't need to look to imagine her bowed head, and the way her hair frames her shadowed face. Beautiful. She and Armin both, beautiful enough to crack his heart in two. He wonders how long it's been since they've allowed themselves to be truly weary, and to rest. 

There's time now. 

Eren rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward to fix the map of the city in his memory, the place where it all ended and began again. 

The sky is turning blue now, still dark above but light on the horizon. The stars are fading, and slowly, like paint seeping across a canvas, the colors shift from dim blues to pinks and oranges and blazing gold. Light spills over the horizon, and this time it carries no fear with it, no monsters waking in the depths. Eren lifts his face to it, drinking it in, and maybe it's the Titan in him that reaches out for it like a plant unfurling, or maybe he's only human, but for the first time in years, it doesn't matter. He feels weightless and hollow and filled up with sunlight, and when he lifts a hand to his face and feels the heat of tears, it isn't grief. Not just grief.

Armin sits on one side of him and Mikasa on the other, and he lets himself shiver and sink into the heat of them, the weight of one arm around his shoulder and another around his waist. It doesn't really matter which is whose. They're all together again, the three of them, like they should be.

They have a future, and it begins today.


End file.
